Stones for Ibarra by Harriet Doerr
"Stones for Ibarra" is a novel by Harriet Doerr that unfolds through a series of interconnected stories set in a fictional small town in central Mexico. The narrative centers on the experiences of Richard and Sara Everton, an American couple who move to Mexico from San Francisco to reclaim their family estate and revive an abandoned copper mine. Upon arrival, they encounter not only the physical deterioration of their ancestral home but also the challenges posed by Richard's terminal leukemia diagnosis. The story explores the cultural divide between the Evertons and the local villagers, revealing how both groups perceive and interact with one another across a spectrum of beliefs and values.
Through diverse characters such as the village priest and various townspeople, the novel brings to life the struggles and resilience of individuals like José Reyes and Kid Muñoz, whose stories reflect broader themes of loss, identity, and the impact of circumstance. With a backdrop of rich cultural elements and folk practices, Doerr's work offers a nuanced perspective on the expatriate experience in Mexico, countering simplistic narratives. The novel, published when Doerr was seventy-three, has received critical acclaim for its spare prose and deep emotional resonance, affirming her as a significant voice in contemporary literature about Mexico.
Stones for Ibarra by Harriet Doerr
First published: 1984
Type of plot: Magical Realism
Time of work: The 1960’s
Locale: The fictional town of Ibarra, Mexico
Principal Characters:
Sara Everton , the wife of Richard EvertonRichard Everton , an American engineerLourdes , their Mexican housekeeperRemedios Acosta , a Mexican woman of the villageJuan Gómez , the local priest
The Novel
Stones for Ibarra began as a series of short stories that share a general location in a central Mexican town so small it does not appear on the fictional map of Mexico. The vignettes that constitute the eighteen chapters of the novel chronicle a series of events focused on one character of Ibarra after another, connected by the passage of time between the arrival of Richard and Sara Everton and Sara’s departure six years later. Doerr claimed that only a small part of Stones for Ibarra was autobiographical, but the framework of the novel recalls the Doerr family’s forays to Mexico.
In the first chapter, “The Evertons Out of Their Minds,” the fictional Sara and Richard Everton go to Mexico from San Francisco, California, to reclaim the family estate and reopen a copper mine abandoned since the Mexican Revolution of 1910. Not long after their arrival at the unexpectedly dilapidated house, which fails to match the faded family photos or the Evertons’s dreams, Richard is diagnosed with leukemia and given six years to live. Despite the brevity of the second chapter, “A Clear Understanding,” several months pass in which the Evertons are observed by the townspeople, who find the Americans peculiar, and the dead spirits of Richard’s family, who Sara believes are present in the house. Richard hires workers for the mine. The Evertons travel to California, returning with special plant food and medication for Richard’s illness. By the end of a year, the village natives conclude that the Americans are mediodesorientado, or half-oriented, and the Evertons understand the natives just as little. “The Life Sentence of José Reyes” tells the tale of a decent man whose life is changed forever by two events: the two years of drought that destroy his field and the accident he suffers at the hands of the Palacio brothers, which results in an epilepsy he cannot afford to treat. The first loss leads José to drunken despair in the local cantina; his drunkenness causes him to let the Palacio brothers swing him through the air to land on the hard cobblestones of the street. The injury from his fall produces a lesion in his brain that causes epileptic seizures. José thus kills the Palacio brothers and is sentenced to life imprisonment.
“Kid Muñoz” is a former boxer blinded in a fight. The tale of his injury and present life weaves in and out of Sara’s consciousness as she thinks that “chance is everything” and resists the thought of Richard’s diagnosis: six years to live, and one year already gone.
In “The Inheritance,” a village boy, Juan, inherits his grandfather’s house and his cousin Pablo, the town idiot. Juan falls in love with Otilia, but Pablo is an obstacle to their relationship and marriage. When Pablo falls in a pool near the dam, Juan hesitates just a few seconds before reaching to help him. Pablo, the real “inheritance,” dies, and Juan’s life is changed forever
“The Red Taxi” tells the story of Chuy Santos, whose two friends, El Gallo and El Golondrino (“the Rooster” and “the Swallow”), work at the Everton mine. Together they decide to buy an aged Volkswagen and become partners in a taxi service. Unfortunately, the two friends, working in unsafe conditions after hours in order to meet the purchase deadline, die in a mine accident. Chuy mourns the loss of his friends; nevertheless, when the Evertons give him the money to buy two coffins in which to bury them, he buys the cheaper ones and uses the difference to buy the car that was the original cause of the accident.
The town priest is a frequent visitor to the Everton home, and he figures in many of the novel’s vignettes of the novel. He has a train of assistant priests, who build basketball courts, are beloved of dogs, and impregnate a woman from a neighboring village. He sponsors a town picnic and solicits donations from the nonbelieving Evertons. Other vignettes relate the sad tale of brother killing brother, the use of native remedies to protect the Everton house, Sara’s Spanish lessons with Madre Petra, and the visit of a Canadian geologist and his Lebanese engineer.
The final two chapters of the novel bring together many of the earlier threads of the narrative. Richard is dead; Sara is alone in the house of his family. The geologist and engineer stop to visit without realizing that Richard is dead. Lourdes still leaves folk herbs hidden in drawers to influence Sara’s destiny. Chuy brings a stranger to the house in his red taxi. The latest assistant priest holds a special mass for Richard. Sara packs and leaves, hoping that more stones will be left to mark the site of the tragedy—the early death of her husband Richard.
The Characters
The characters of Stones for Ibarra are revealed more profoundly by the stories told and observations made about them than by anything they themselves reveal—the deep cultural divide between villagers and expatriates is exposed. Though the eighteen chapters present numerous minor and apparently idiosyncratic characters, the narrative depends primarily on four central figures.
Richard Everton is an admirable character. A deeply moral man who cares for his workers and has some comprehension of his importance to the village as the employer of many men, Richard takes his illness and impending death in stride. When his wife Sara begins to embellish her tales of the locals’ lives, he intuitively understands that she hopes her storytelling can create a new and different story for her and Richard than the dark future the physician has given them.
Sara Everton is, like her husband, near forty and a secular humanist who believes in the power of the human individual rather than in any God or gods. Her beliefs are sorely tested by Richard’s leukemia and her inability to create a different future by simply imagining it. Sara’s attitude is in stark contrast to that of the villagers, who believe deeply in the one and only God but also in such folk remedies as herbs against maladies and a thorn to protect the house and mine.
Lourdes, the Evertons’ Mexican housekeeper, and Remedios Acosta, a village woman, interact with the strange Americans and report to the village on the foreigners’ curious behavior. They present and represent the Mexican perspective in contrast to the alien Evertons’ perspective. The village priest, Juan Gómez, appears almost exclusively as “the cura” rather than as a named individual. Though he appears frequently in many contexts, just as a true village priest would, he does not develop much as a character but rather serves as a catalyst to move the narrative forward and as a foil to the Everton’s atheism. At the end of the novel, Sara remains an atheist, but she has softened toward native practices, such as the placing of stones to mark the scene of a tragedy.
Critical Context
Stones for Ibarra, Doerr’s first novel, was published when she was seventy-three years old. The novel began as a series of short stories based in a fictional Mexican town. Doerr wrote the first three of these stories in her late sixties, when she returned as a widow of several years to finish the bachelor’s degree she had begun as a young unmarried woman. These first stories earned for her a literary prize in London (the Transatlantic Review’s Henfield Foundation Award), a place in the writer John L’Heureux’s Stanford University creative writing class, and the attention of Viking Press editors in London and the United States. At their suggestion and with L’Heureux’s help, what had begun as a series of short stories was expanded, rearranged, and re-created as a novel. The novel was an immediate popular and critical success, earning a number of awards, including the American Book Award for First Work of Fiction. Critics recognized the influences of Graham Greene, Gabriel García Márquez, and Katherine Anne Porter in Doerr’s work, but Doerr herself simply commented that without reading, writing is impossible.
Critics have commented on Doerr’s spare prose, in which each word carries enormous weight, and have noted as well the sense of oral storytelling prevalent throughout the text. By presenting a positive but complex view of the relationships among American expatriates and native inhabitants, Stones for Ibarra is an appropriate counter to negative stereotypes perpetuated by much expatriate writing on Mexico. Doerr continued this sympathetic portrayal of both expatriates and natives in her second novel, Consider This, Señora (1993), and in some of the short stories published in The Tiger in the Grass (1995). She thus became a major voice on modern Mexico.
Bibliography
Christian Science Monitor. LXXVI, January 6, 1984, p. B6.
Daley, Yvonne. “Late Bloomer.” Stanford Magazine, November-December, 1997, 76-79. A visit with Doerr at her home when she is eighty-seven years old and working on her autobiography, which she plans to divide into three sections: her years as a housewife and mother, her years in Mexico, and her years as a writer.
Henderson, Katherine. “Harriet Doerr.” Inter/View: Talks with America’s Writing Women, edited by Mickey Pearlman and Katherine Usher Henderson. Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1990. An essay based on an interview with Doerr. Provides basic biographical information and briefly discusses Stones for Ibarra. Explains the origin of the title from Mexican Indian practice.
Kirkus Reviews. LI, October 15, 1983, p. 1102.
Los Angeles Times Book Review. January 1, 1984, p. 4.
Ms. XII, January, 1984, p. 12.
New Directions for Women. XIII, July, 1984, p. 10.
The New Republic. CXC, April, 1984, p. 40.
The New York Times Book Review. LXXXIX, January 8, 1984, p. 8.
Publishers Weekly. CCXXIV, November 4, 1983, p. 57.
See, Lisa. “Harriet Doerr.” Writing for Your Life Number Two, edited by Sybil Steinberg. New York: Publishers Weekly, 1995. Focuses on Doerr’s experiences in Mexico and their relationship to Stones for Ibarra and Consider This, Señora. Also discusses the effects of her age on her writing.
The Wall Street Journal. CCIII, January 23, 1984, p. 20.